


All This and Heaven Too

by soliloquize



Category: Check Please! (Webcomic)
Genre: Genderqueer Character, M/M, Other, Soft Boys, exploration of gender identity, gratuitous fluff, my kinks are good communication and mutual support
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-06
Updated: 2017-03-06
Packaged: 2018-09-28 17:16:40
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,001
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10141142
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soliloquize/pseuds/soliloquize
Summary: "Would you be okay if I wore a dress to Winter Screw?""Um.  What?"Nursey forced himself to take a breath.  "Would you be okay if I wore a dress to Winter Screw?"





	

**Author's Note:**

> inspired in part by the hc in "pulled the daisies fine" by quidhitch that Nursey likes wearing lipstick and also some of my own experiences bc what's fic without a little projection?
> 
> title from the Florence and the Machine song of the same name

           “Would you be okay if I wore a dress to Winter Screw?”

The question spilled out quickly so Nursey couldn’t chicken out of asking it halfway through.  They were lying in the living room of the Haus, Dex sitting sideways on the couch, Nursey on his stomach on the floor.  His pose was desperately orchestrated to look chill and casual, which he was not at all.  Dex’s eyebrows furrowed and Nursey could feel his heart thumping against the carpet.

“What?”

“Would you,” Nursey took a deep breath.  Dex was not going to dismiss him out of hand. 

Dex just wanted to make sure he’d heard right because he zones out when he’s programming.  Dex cared about Nursey; he wasn’t indignant or suspicious, he was concerned.  Nursey hoped.  He forced himself to take another deep breath.  “Would you be okay if I wore a dress to Winter Screw?”

“Um.”  Dex looked up fully from his laptop.  Despite his best efforts, Nursey was truly incapable of objectively assessing the situation at this point, but he thought—hoped, whatever—that Dex’s hesitance was him thinking about how to phrase his response and not because he was wildly skeeved out by the idea of it.  “You don’t need my permission?”

“Yeah—but I don’t want you to feel uncomfortable.”   _Or to dump me._

Dex scrunched his eyebrows more.  It was his primary method of conveying emotion, eyebrows and blushes.

“I mean… if you’re comfortable, that’s the important thing?”  He finally made direct eye contact, and Nursey didn’t know how much frightened-prey-animal was in his expression at this point, but Dex’s face softened.  “I’m not going to refuse to date you because you’re in a dress.”

“That’s good to know.”  It didn’t come out as chirpy because Nursey honestly meant it.  The carpet was short and rough on his fingertips when he brushed his hand over it, matted from years of spills and being trampled on.

“Are you—um, is this something I can ask you questions about?”

This was Dex asking about boundaries, and boundaries were good.  Nursey sat up and faced the couch so he could see Dex’s reactions properly instead of out of the corner of his eye; he could be brave like that sometimes.

“Yeah, um.  Yeah.”

Dex nodded, closed his laptop, fidgeted with the frayed edge of his notebook.  Nursey carefully remained calm because sometimes Dex needed a minute to gather his thoughts so he could actually say what he meant, and Nursey knew that, so he didn’t freak out or overthink every choice he had ever made that got him to this point.

“Nurse, hey,” Dex said seriously, looking at him like he could hear the thoughts whirling around in Nursey’s head.  “I’m just trying to gather more information here, okay?  Breaking up is off the table.  I might not totally understand, but it’s not going to change how I feel about you.”

Nursey laughed through the lump in his throat.  “S’okay, I don’t really understand it either.”

Dex gave him his usual fond smile and Nursey basked in the warmth.

“Is it like… doing drag?  Like a performance thing or whatever?  Or d’you feel like you’re not, um, a guy?  I—sorry, I don’t know the right words for this stuff.”

“It’s fine.  I don’t really know, exactly.”

Oh, man if this wasn’t the scariest thing Nursey had ever done.  Which was kind of pathetic, since Dex had already assured him he had his back.  But Dex was gay, he was attracted to men, and Nursey couldn’t know for sure what it would mean for them if he admitted he might not _be_ a man.  The uncertainty killed him, like it always did, his anxiety a dickbag ex that screwed him over every time he was unfortunate enough to run into them again.

“Okay, so—Derek is still okay?”

“Yeah.  Yeah, I mean I’m not dysphoric.  Not usually, anyway.  Like—it doesn’t bother me that I have a dick or that people use masculine pronouns for me or anything.”

He tacked on the elaboration as an afterthought; Dex was better than he used to be, at the very least at admitting he didn’t know what he didn’t know, but he probably hadn’t spent his teen years googling _boys in makeup_ or _transmasc gender identities_ either.  Plus Nursey knew his mechanically oriented computer nerd of a boyfriend thought better with concrete examples than abstract language.

“So, like, sometimes I’ll get weird about hair,” Nursey continued.  “I’ll just get really anxious and have to shave at like four o’clock in the afternoon.  But even then, I don’t feel right identifying as a woman.”

Dex nodded like he could process that even if he couldn’t relate, and he clambered down on the floor next to Nursey.  “I really don’t know enough about this kind of thing to ask the right questions.”  He nudged Nursey’s leg with his.  “But that’s my problem, okay?  So go ahead and word vomit on me, I know you have a million things to say.”

“Shut up, sometimes I’m quiet.”

“Sure, if you’re word vomiting on paper, or reading someone else’s word vomit.”

Nursey snorted, dropping his head onto Dex’s shoulder.  Dex kissed his temple and Nursey melted into the simple gesture, which was as good as a thousand words of affirmation from Dex. 

He folded his hands and tried to think of where to start. “Part of it is honestly just cultural?  Like I wore a kurta when my mom and my amma got married, and that pretty much meets the western definition of a dress.  And I know Shitty goes off about it all the time, but gender roles are really stupid and arbitrary.  Like why the fuck shouldn’t I wear makeup?  I look _really good_ in makeup.”

“You look really good in everything,” Dex said, and because it was Dex he managed to make it sound like an insult (but because it was Dex, Nurse knew he meant it).

“And you’re the one who gets to date me, you lucky bastard.”

Dex was rolling his eyes, but Nursey couldn’t stop grinning as he kissed him.  He was surrounded by evidence that he hadn’t irreparably fucked up their dynamic by admitting all of this; he could have Dex and be honest about himself too, and the intensity of his relief was close to orgasmic.

The kissing was less so, tender rather than sexy, but they still managed to occupy several minutes.

“S’there anything I could do better?” Dex asked when they broke apart, though he didn’t move from his new position on Nursey’s lap.

“Um, not really.  This whole talk was really good, just knowing you accept me even though I don’t know exactly what’s going on.”

“You never know what’s going on.”

“And your martyr complex is the size of Quebec.  Now, hush.”  Nursey ran a hand through Dex’s hair which surprised him with its softness every time Dex sat still long enough for him to do it.  Now, Dex leaned into his touch slightly, a housecat instead of a lynx.

“Seriously, though, you’ll tell me if you feel uncomfortable?  In like, an identity way, not like your ears are too cold because you forgot your hat again.”        

Nursey laughed at how quickly he closed that loophole.  “I’m glad my physical anguish doesn’t concern you.  But yeah, I’ll let you know if I ever decide on a label or different pronouns or something.”

“You don’t think you will?”

“Maybe?  It’s just like—normally people can label their gender, and they can draw a neat little box around it.  And I feel like I probably _am_ a guy, but if I try to draw that box the lines either go fuzzy or I start getting really claustrophobic.”

“You’re such a fucking poet.”

“That is a lifestyle, not a gender identity.”

“’A lifestyle’, Jesus Christ.”  Dex kissed his neck.  “Are you sure though?  You could be missing out on a really badass Eowyn moment, y’know ‘I am no man!’”

“You’re such a _nerd_ , babe, and obviously I’d be the one to kill Macbeth since he fears no man of woman born.”

“Does that mean you’re going to abandon me and our children to be murdered while you fuck off to England.”

“Oh my god, obscure Shakespeare reference, that’s so hot babe.”

Dex was still running his lips up and down Nursey’s throat, but Nursey could hear his eyes roll.

“I took high school English, Nurse.”

“Hey, do you want to kiss me or chirp me?”

“Pretty sure I’m doing both.”

“Pretty sure I love you.”

And okay, Nursey had not exactly meant to let that slip out.  But from the look on Dex’s face when he kissed him properly, hungrily, he didn’t mind, and Nursey couldn’t bring himself to regret a thing.

 

 

* * *

 

The first person he sent a picture of himself in the dress to was his sister.  His step sister, if he was going to be technical, but his relationship with Nadia had always seemed more organic than that.  He knew his mom considered herself really lucky to find Amma, but he’d always thought privately that he’d gotten the best deal out of that arrangement even if Nadia only lived with them a year before leaving for college.

Nadia was the first person to explicitly tell him it was okay for him to love whoever he wanted, look however he wanted after she found him hungover and crying because whatever pasty white Andover boy he’d made out with the night before didn’t want to acknowledge him in the daylight.  So Nadia got the first picture.

The dress was a simple black number that went most of the way to his knees, with a halter top so he didn’t have to worry about fitting his shoulders into anything.  He paired it with patent leather motorcycle boots he’d found at a thrift store; it was no easy matter to find heels in men’s size 13, and also Nursey wasn’t really interested in spending a night drinking in heels, not because of any presentation semantics, but because he was a sane person who had enough trouble walking on flat ground while stone cold sober.

His hair was held back (more or less) by a headband, not that different from how he wore it if he was working out and didn’t want hair in his face.  The overall effect wasn’t particularly feminine between and his muscular chest and the boots and legs that he hadn’t felt the need to shave.  He didn’t _need_ to be feminine, necessarily, knew also that his own internalized racism probably had a hand in his struggle to see himself as something soft.  It still looked a little like he was ten again, playing dress up in his mother’s closet, and that dickbag voice inside him was insisting that’s what everyone was going to think—that this was a costume, a joke.

But he wasn’t at Andover anymore.  This was college, this was  _ Samwell _ for fuck’s sake.  And he felt good in this dress, felt comfortable and confident and empowered by the harmony of his presentation even as his nerves clamored that no one else would hear it.  He watched the skirt fan out in the mirror as he slowly twisted his hips, flowy, freedom, fabulous (was that too stereotypical?), fitting, fate.

He tried to bottle the feeling to save for later, since he didn’t have time to actually  write it now, but man, if he could get this down on paper it would be the best thing he’d ever written.  It might get written in his own blood—might already be, if he was going to get philosophical with it—but it would be worth it.

“Nursey, you almost ready?”

But all that later.

“You can come in,” he called to Dex through the door.

“That doesn’t answer my question,” he grumbled as he entered.  Then he caught sight of Nursey and just kind of—stood there.  “Fuck, Derek.”

Nursey raised an eyebrow, but Dex did not seem inclined to elaborate, just licked his lips and looked a little awed.  Nursey gave him his best smolder in return.

“You’re, um.  Really hot.”

A grin crept across Nursey’s face.  “I know you are, but what am I?”

“Shut the fuck up, Nurse,” Dex huffed, but his eyes lingered on Nursey’s collarbone and lips long enough to belie his annoyance.  The grin melted into a smirk.

“We’re still meeting C and C to pregame?”  _ Do we have time to make out a little first? _

“Uh, yeah.  Chowder just texted me, he already went over to Cait’s.”

Nursey checked his phone which was lying on the bottom bunk, silent and unlit.  

“He didn’t text me.”

“That’s because he knows you being on time is a lost cause.”

“Chowder would never be so judgmental.”

“Not to your face.”

Nursey laughed and threw the empty water bottle from his bedside table at his boyfriend.

“Alright, give me five more minutes, I’m almost ready.”

“Sure you are,” Dex grumbled, but he was smiling.  “You do—you already look amazing, babe.”

“Wait—“ Nursey only stumbled a little when his boots skidded on the uneven floorboards.  Dex turned and Nursey caught his face between his hands, pulling him in for a thorough kiss.  Dex was blushing when he pulled back, and Nursey was very tempted to kiss him again, pregaming be damned.  “Wanted to do that before I put on my lipstick.  Now get out, I’ll be out soon.”  

He slapped Dex on the ass and closed the door behind him so he could look in the ancient mirror that was screwed on the back.

He didn’t like the feel of having foundation caked on his skin, even if he could fucking find one that matched his complexion, so he just dragged a touch of highlighter over his cheekbones.  Simple eyeliner, a coat of mascara, and then he grabbed the little tube of lipstick Nadia had given him for his birthday two years ago.

Supposedly it had been so he would stop messing with her makeup, but Nursey knew that was complete bravado.  She loved their movie and makeover nights as much as he did, but she probably also knew how much it would mean to him to have ownership over some small part of that.

He applied the dark red shimmer carefully, pursed his lips in the mirror, pouted, batted his eyes, winked.  That was it for his straight face; he sent Nadia another selfie of him with an unflatteringly wide smile because for once he didn’t feel like being chill or even faking it.

His phone buzzed, and he saw Nadia had replied.  Her first response was a close up on her face, grumpy but fond with the caption  _ worth waking up for _ .  The next one she was smiling genuinely, as widely as him because they weren’t related by blood but dammit they were siblings.   _ Proud of u _ .

Nursey screenshot the last one and walked out on top of the world to meet Dex, who was slouching against the wall, leaning on one shoulder, arms crossed.  He’d already abandoned his jacket and rolled his shirt sleeves up to expose his forearms, and the end result was like something out of a goddamn magazine.

“We’re going to be the hottest fucking Screw couple since Camilla Collins and our very own Jay-Z,” Nursey declared, very impressed with both of them.

“You’re going to freeze, is what you are.”

“I’ve got my adoring boyfriend to keep me warm.” Nursey batted his eyes and received Dex’s usual unimpressed look.

“Let’s get going, dumbass.”

“Race you to Cait’s!”

Nursey took off sprinting, and not just because it was too cold to be outside any longer than absolutely necessary and he was too vain to wear a jacket over his pretty dress (although, fine, maybe that was most of the reason.  He knew without looking that Dex would be on his heels, and it only took a block for him to catch up.  They were neck and neck as they approached Cait’s building until Dex grabbed Nursey around the waist, pulled him into an aggressive sort of embrace, and spun them both around to absorb their momentum and bring them to a stop.  Breathing hard, pressed against each other’s warm bodies in the cold air, Dex’s arms around his waist, chest against his, everything was vivid and crystalline and beautiful.

Dex licked his lips.  “I love you.”

And here Nursey had thought the previous moment had been perfect.  He leaned his forehead against Dex’s and wished for a brief moment he could dive into the gorgeous golden pools of his eyes.

It didn’t bother Nursey that Dex hadn’t said it back the first time Nursey told him he loved him.  They’d established a while ago that Nursey communicated in words, and Dex in actions, and there had been plenty of evidence that Dex was just as invested in Nursey.  But it was still nice to hear it.

“I love you too.  Like a stupid amount.” 

Dex grinned, eyes still too soft to look properly smug.  His arms tightened and he pecked Nursey on the cheek.

“Also, just so you know, I won.”  Dex took a step back, pulling Nursey with him, and then Dex was pressed against the wall of Cait’s building and  _ there _ was the smug look Nursey had been waiting for.

“Babe, I cannot  _ believe _ you would abuse such a poignant moment to win a dare!”

Dex just laughed and nuzzled his face into Nursey’s neck, and Nursey was having a hard time even pretending to be irritated.

“Your neck is freezing, Nurse.”

“It’s cold outside, Poindexter.”

“Mm, we should get you inside then.”

But Dex kissed him carefully right under his jaw as he said it, and Nursey was wondering if he couldn’t stand the cold a bit longer.  Dex was already pulling away though, swiping his ID and holding the door for Nursey because he was a huge dork.

Nursey loved him anyway.

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> bonus reactions to Nursey’s iconic Look that didn’t fit in this story but defs happened
> 
> Farmer: Looking good Nurse.  
> Chowder: Oh, wow, Nursey! You do look good! I mean—you always do. But that dress is really pretty! And Dex, you look nice too!  
> (why yes I do ship polyfrogs why do you ask)  
> Tango: Is that a dress?  
> Whiskey: No, that’s his hockey uniform, T.  
> Bitty: You look gorgeous, hun.
> 
> Ransom and Holster have graduated, but they comment on the Insta pics with lots of heart eye emojis and hyperbole and overuse of the word “bro”, as they do.  
> Shitty calls Nursey and actually cries (bc he’s high): Your confidence inspires me, brah! Fuck gender stereotypes and heteronormativity! Fuck everyone! Fuck me! You are the most beauteous human being I have ever seen and I lived with Jack fucking Zimmermann for three years!


End file.
